musings on foreign affairs from a somewhat rational woodland critter

Main menu

Post navigation

Meanwhile at cnn

Historical repost from January 2010.
In a distinctly out-of-character move, I turned on the television tonight while I was eating, only to see a breathtaking display of incompetence and stupidity by Wolf Blitzer. Let me preface my thought with the disclosure that while I was eating lunch today, I stumbled upon CSPAN caught in a rare moment of excitement: Rep. Patrick Kennedy screaming and pointing in a tirade against the media’s coverage of the war and of Congress. Kennedy was expressing frustration at the fact that political news had been covering Eric Massa’s labyrinth of inanity for nearly two days; Kennedy decried the fact that the war in Afghanistan receives almost no coverage nowadays.

Later, at dinner, Wolf Blitzer brought up the video to two “political analysts” who Blitzer had been asking to give advice to President Obama. Blitzer played the video (embedded in page) , in which Kennedy steamed,

If anyone wants to know where the cynicism is, there’s two press people in this gallery! We’re talking about Eric Massa 24/7 on the TV. We’re talking about war and peace — $3 billion, 1,000 lives — and no press, no press. It’s despicable, the national press corps right now.

The responses of the two guests were tepid and uninspired, as if they were hungry and wanted to go home and play in their cribs. Then, immediately after the video showing this forceful tirade against the failure of the press, Blitzer turns to his side: “Next, we have actress Reese Witherspoon on to talk about women in the world,” or something—-I threw the channel-changer at the TV as soon as I saw Reese Witherspoon. Really, Wolf? You just heard Patrick Kennedy screaming about the press covering petty, puerile shit like the Eric Massa debacle, and then you immediately cut to Reese Witherspoon, a CELEBRITY who doesn’t know DICK about, well, ANYTHING? I don’t even have anything to say. So I drew a picture.